


Vivian

by FrannieHopkirk



Category: Short Stories - Saki
Genre: Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:49:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25887622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrannieHopkirk/pseuds/FrannieHopkirk
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	Vivian

We walked into the undertakers place, a straggely group off the plane from Sydney. His family. I noticed a coffin at the end of the room, on a trolley.

When I think of that stark moment in my emptiness, my insensitivity, my  
stupidity, was such that I did not fetch up the reality that my son was  
In that coffin. 

My son was lying there, with all his special stuff: hat, dictionary, leather jacket gathered around him. Some form of grotesque denial had   
Set- in with me, as though I had wandered into the wrong funeral.

But the funeral was for my son, and he was lying there, face up, inside   
A wooden box and he was dead. My son was dead and I immediately knew  
What I know now, that it was my fault.

God forgive me – I had borne that brilliant little boy, that poet and dreamer  
that lover of birds and dogs and women and football and literature. And here I   
was in the same room as he with a huge crowd of the Melbourne friends that  
loved and cherished him because his own family knew not how.

I had brought music I knew he would have loved, Music of the Spheres. I gave it to someone and they played it throughout this broken, torn, heart shredded ceremony which was about the wonder of this person, this man, this poet and scholar, this son of mine. He lay there, face up, with his stuff around him, his friends gathered at the end of the room where they did not have to speak to us – his family.

My shame ran deep, deep without cease, so deep I knew it would forever tear at me, it would never leave me alone because I would never be able to forgive myself – shallow, worthless, failure of motherhood, failure of humanity. 

It is four years now and I still howl my holy grief – the mother’s grief which   
Failed, he who was idealistic, devoted to beauty and the richness of life yet who was unable to tame the violent, fury – the poet’s fury.

We all failed him – to a man, we failed him. I howl, I howl out loud, in the madness of a stricken animal standing over her slain offspring – forgive me, forgive me, forgive me. I am sorry, I am sorry, I am sorry.   
My tears for him will never dry. The fury of my guilt that I‘wasted’him. He who was so riven with love, so overflowing with passion.

There is no forgiveness for me – the cursed mother, the failed mother. There   
Is no forgiveness for me.


End file.
